2019 Chateau Amour Medoc 750 ml

Since 2016, Eric Boissenot has consulted for the family-run Château Amour. It’s the same eye, the same palate, the same rigor he brings to the First Growths. The difference is that almost no one in the United States has had the chance to find out.

Boissenot doesn’t own a great château. He doesn’t seek publicity, doesn’t drive a chauffeur’s car, and his name will never appear on a wine label. What he does have is arguably the most coveted client list in Bordeaux—Lafite Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Mouton Rothschild, Léoville Las Cases, among others. He is, by most measures, the most influential figure in the Médoc that most wine drinkers have never heard of.

Since 2006 Corinne and Georges Dadda have managed the estate with a clear ambition: to produce wines that honor the Médoc tradition while embracing the precision that modern viticulture makes possible. In 2016—the same year Boissenot came aboard—the estate earned HVE (Haute Valeur Environnementale) certification, France’s High Environmental Value designation, reflecting a commitment to sustainable farming that runs through everything they do here.

The vineyard sits on gravelly hillocks in the northern Médoc, where 65% gravel soils over clay-limestone deliver exactly the kind of hydric stress that Cabernet Sauvignon craves. The Atlantic Ocean and the Gironde estuary—the widest in Europe—wrap the estate in a temperate maritime climate that moderates the extremes and allows for steady, even ripening year after year. The 50/50 blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot is vinified parcel by parcel in temperature-controlled tanks, with a cuvaison of three to five weeks and aging of 12 to 14 months—enough time to build structure and integration without over-extracting the fruit.

The 2019 vintage played beautifully to these strengths. It was not a simple year—but the gravel terraces of the Médoc handled the hydric stress precisely as they’re supposed to, and September rains arrived at just the right moment. The result across the appellation was wines with exceptional typicity: round and silky, with a fresh, fruity core balanced by the structural backbone that makes Left Bank Bordeaux worth cellaring.